Excerpts from The Foundations of Placer County Horticulture
1850-1900
(a Sam Gittings Thesis)
Chapter VI
Ample water proved to be only half of the battle. Additional concessions were yet to be won from the railroad companies. Growers realized an increased water supply would proved of small consequence if they were not able to dispose of their fruits to a broad market. . . . Placer was not alone in advocating reduced freight rates, as all California fruit growers were in the same predicament and concerted action helped to get some of the concessions they sought.
High transportation costs and slow, irregular transit time presented many problems. The first railroad rates were twelve hundred dollars per car, passenger time, and nine hundred freight; afterward, nine hundred and seven hundred; then eight hundred and five hundred; and in 1885, were reduced to six hundred and four hundred to Chicago and trains of fifteen cars, three hundred per car. Growers were forced to sell much of their fruit to Denver or west of Denver, as it was unprofitable to ship to Chicago and other eastward points. If the fruit was sent to Chicago and beyond, the selling price was beyond the means of the average income family and sales were limited to those with high incomes. The length of time in transit detracted from the value of fruit and irregularity in arrival tended to demoralize markets.
SPECIAL FRUIT TRAINS
Before the fruit shipping season of 1886 began, the Southern Pacific Railroad Company made a proposition to fruit growers and shippers: whenever fifteen carloads of fruit were offered at one time, the same would be carried to Eastern states as a special fruit train. This train would run on a fast schedule approximating passenger train time, at the special rate of three hundred dollars per car of ten tons, which was one-half the rate previously charged for passenger train service. This rate was to Chicago and common points, while to Missouri River points, the rate was two hundred eighty dollars per car of like capacity.
The first train was loaded and shipped on June 24, 1886, by the fruit shipping firms of W. R. Strong and Company and Edwin T. Earl, of Sacramento and consisted of fifteen cars of fruit. “This was positively the first full train of deciduous fruits ever shipped from California.”. . .
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